


bitter/sweet

by provocative_envy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, POV First Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 10:16:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When I finally came, it felt as if I had been flayed open, spine exposed, a cachet of fireworks set off in half-second increments along my vertebrae as he murmured my name so reverently I could not help but think that there must be some magic to it, to me, to him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. before and after

 

* * *

          

We fell in love slowly.

I had not realized—not for days, weeks, months—that he had changed, that I had changed, that the rough— _rotten_ —derision I had spent so long reserving just for him—it had dissipated, evaporated, drifted up and up and away like the steam from a particularly scalding shower.

 

(“ _Why weren’t your grades better when we were in school?” I asked him one afternoon._

 _He shrugged. "_ _I hate reading.”_

_“ **What**?”_

_He looked amused._ _“I grew up with magic,” he explained. “It made things easy. Books always felt like an awful lot of work in comparison.”_

_We were fundamentally different._

_It had ceased to bother me at some point_.)

 

He never apologized for what had happened to me in his parents’ house. After a while, I had stopped expecting him to, of course; and it was _that_ , of all things, that forced me to wonder when I had come to understand him so well. All of the observations I had made of him over the years had been surface deep—he was selfish and he was spoiled and he was _cruel_ , casually, easily, and even though he had grown up to have rather distractingly pretty eyes, he was still inherently _loathsome_ , wasn’t he?

 

( _He was not, as it turned out._ )

 

What he _was_ , though, was clever. Clever and obstinate and damaged, almost irreparably, like a crumpled, balled-up sheet of paper that would never be able to iron itself out, never be as crisp or cold or flat as it once was. And his voice—the polished, aristocratic cadence of it had been left unaffected by everything that had gone wrong—was always tinged with a fierce sort of resentment whenever he spoke of his family.

 

( _He told me, once, that he felt that they had manipulated him._

 _I did not disagree_.)

 

He wrote letters to his mother every Sunday afternoon, however, like clockwork, the scrape of a pen roving across parchment overloud in the tense, bizarrely charged silence of his sitting room. I never asked to read them, was eager to respect the last shred of privacy the Ministry afforded him, and he was always quiet when he came back from putting them in the mailbox.

 

( _I really should have read them_.)

 

* * *

 


	2. bitter

* * *

 

_September, 1998 – January, 1999_

 

He had not been surprised that I had been the one sent to knock on his door—the entire first floor of a Georgian townhouse in muggle London—and had even chuckled mockingly at the sight of my suitcase. His guest room was large, expensively appointed, almost eerily impersonal; a cursory search of the rest of the flat had revealed nothing magical, nothing to connect the blandly handsome young man wearing distressed designer denim with the infamous war criminal of the world he had left behind. 

 

( _“What do they call you here?” I asked. “I can’t imagine that you used your real name.”_

 _He hesitated._ _“Lucius,” he finally answered. “Lucius Black.”_

_I tried not to wince, but his jaw tightened and his shoulders stiffened and I was insurmountably certain that I had failed.)_

 

It had been awkward in the beginning. He had been less defensive about his exile than I had anticipated, less openly hostile than he had been at Hogwarts, and the neatly organized notecards I had brought with me, replete with harmless, bullet-pointed conversation topics, ended up being unnecessary. We talked about the weather—dull, rainy, gray—and the last movie he had seen at the cinema— _Halloween H20_ ; he mentioned that his housekeeper came on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and that he usually spent his Saturdays in Camden. I asked him where he kept the clean towels. He showed me how to use the shower. We were both polite, and neither of us mentioned the unused box of condoms that fell onto the bathroom counter when I clumsily opened the mirrored cabinet door. He had blushed, and I had been fascinated.

 

( _We played chess the next morning._

 _He won, twice, and I didn’t think about Ron Weasley at all._ )

 

It took him a month to muster up the courage to ask about my friends, about my family, about what I was doing there, with him, when there were so many other places I could have gone—places where I could be myself and have a wand and not have to wait ten minutes for the kettle to boil.

“My parents are safe,” I replied harshly. “And I didn’t want to—I’m just taking a break, Malfoy, one that I knew wouldn’t involve magic. I’m so incredibly _sick_ of using magic.”

He waited several moments before responding. “Weasley and Potter?” he pressed.

“They’re fine, I’m sure,” I snapped.

He snorted. “Please, call me Draco,” was all that he said.

 

( _Harry and Ron **were** fine._

 _They were fine, and I was not, and that had been enough of a reason to leave them both behind._ )

 

Sometime in October I discovered that he owned an automobile, a sleek late-model Mercedes that had an engine that purred lowly when he turned the key to start it. He drove us north, to Cambridge, windshield wipers sweeping a graceful arc across the glass, and explained that his father had taught him to drive one of the family Range Rovers the summer he had turned fifteen. I noticed, between the pounding of the rain and the dim static of the radio, that he had sounded fond, even wistful, as he told me about the way he had burned straight through the clutch while trying to learn to shift gears, and how his father had merely laughed before suggesting that they find him a car with an automatic transmission.

 

( _We went out to dinner that night, to a quiet Italian restaurant with starched white tablecloths and a heavily accented waiter._

_He ordered a bottle of red wine._

_Our eyes met as he poured me a second glass._

_“My parents live in Australia now,” I said quietly. “They don’t remember who I am.”_ )

 

Halloween fell on a Saturday. We spent the first half of the evening sitting cross-legged on the sitting room floor, mugs of hard cider between our knees, watching _The Shining_ on VHS and ignoring the persistent chime of the doorbell. When the clock struck ten, he tentatively remarked that it might be fun to visit the pub around the corner. I agreed. I changed into a dress. He glanced at my bare legs only once before we left.

 

( _His hand was a steady, fire-hot brand on my lower back as we entered the pub._

_We wasted time drinking whiskey on rickety wooden stools that felt too tall._

_"Can I see your arm?” he asked around midnight, his face flushed. “Where she—you know.”_

_I flinched, felt dizzy, wondered when it was that the ground became so uneven and the tabletop had started to tilt._ _“Can I see yours?” I retorted._ )

 

Harry showed up halfway through November.

“We’ve all been worried about you,” he said somberly, looking uncomfortable and out of place at the dining room table. “I know that what happened with Ron—”

“This—me choosing to do this—it had nothing to do with Ronald,” I interrupted.

He gently put down his tea cup. “Hermione, you left for Australia and—you never even told us you came back! I had to find out from Remus where you were and what you were doing. Which…rehabilitating _Malfoy_? Really? How can you stand to be in the same room with him? Especially after—” He broke off.

I toyed with the pendant of the necklace I was wearing. “He’s not all bad, Harry,” I said, feeling numb.

His eyes widened behind his glasses. “ _Not all bad_?” he repeated. “Hermione, you don’t need to be here. Doing this, I mean. We miss you. All of us miss you. Come _home_ , please.”

 

( _I didn’t tell him that I already felt as if I **was** home._

 _It was not the last time I thought of Malfoy’s flat that way._ )

 

It snowed on the twelfth day of December. I took a leisurely bath in the antique, claw-footed tub, piling my hair on top of my head and staring out the bathroom window at the bright-white flakes falling from the sky. I had forgotten to lock the door, however, and as I stood up, lukewarm water dripping down my torso, arm stretched out to reach for a towel—the doorknob turned and the latch clicked and Draco sauntered in, whistling, navy cashmere sweater pulled halfway across his chest.

He froze.

My mouth fell open, caught on a scream.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he finally swore, running a hand through his hair before turning around and charging into his bedroom.

 

_(He had not—_

_He had not looked—_

_**He had not looked away**._ )

 

Three days later—a Saturday—he came home from Camden with three bottles of champagne and a Christmas tree. He set the tree up in the far corner of the sitting room, pine needles littering the plush ivory carpet, and produced three large boxes full of delicate porcelain ornaments.

“We should decorate,” he insisted, planting a red velvet Santa hat on my head. “Come on, Granger, be festive.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re not going to start to singing, are you?”

He smirked. “Just pour the champagne,” he said, fiddling with the packaging on a box of multicolored lights. “I even bought the kind you like, with the orange label.”

 

( _Lighting the fireplace had been his idea._

_It crackled in front of me, casting warm bronze shadows across my face._

_Two empty champagne bottles, labels torn off, rested on the polished mahogany coffee table._ )

 

“I guarantee that I am the first Malfoy male in at least three centuries to make it to nineteen still a virgin,” he complained, waving his arm in my general direction.

I tilted my head back, closing one eye as I stared at the ceiling. “Really?” I asked. “I thought for sure that you and Pansy—”

He made a retching noise. “ _No_ ,” he said emphatically. “She—she would have gotten herself pregnant the second my trousers came undone if I’d given her the chance. And I def— _definitely_ wasn’t going to wind up married to her, not if I could bloody well help it. _Ugh_. Can you even imagine? Spawn with _Parkinson_?”

I giggled. “She was always so vile to me,” I mused, words slightly slurred. “Actually, so were you, weren’t you?”

He scoffed. “I was fucking brainwashed,” he replied bitterly. “And you saw where it got me.”

 

( _He often had nightmares._

_I would hear him shouting in his sleep through the thin plaster wall that separated our rooms._

_"No. No. Stop it, let her go, please, stop, **let her go** —”_

_It was always the same.)_

 

The following Monday, Ginny Weasley came by with an invitation to the Burrow for Christmas. Her vivid red hair was down, the ends just brushing her shoulders, and an emerald green scarf was wrapped around her neck. She looked at Draco curiously as he poked his head into the kitchen and declared he’d be back with breakfast—rosemary scones from the bakery I preferred in Notting Hill—within the hour.

“That was…domestic,” she said carefully.

I arched a brow. “What do you want, Ginny?”

She straightened her spine. “Well, first I’d like to tell you that we all think _Ronald_ is a right fucking bastard—”

I cut her off. “ _Ginny_.”

She cleared her throat. “Right. Anyway—my mother,” she began, but then stopped. “No, not just her. _We_ —all of us, even Fleur—would love to see you for Christmas, Hermione. Please say you’ll come.”

I wrapped my fingers around my mug of hot chocolate. “I have plans, unfortunately,” I said stiffly. “Draco rented a cottage in Ramsgate for the holiday. They have excellent oysters there.”

She blinked. “You’re going to go eat oysters with Draco Malfoy,” she echoed. “For Christmas. Alone. In a cottage. With Draco Malfoy.”

My eyelids felt heavy as I glared at the green speckled marble of the countertops. “It would seem so, yes,” I ground out. “Look, Ginny, this isn’t the best time for—”

“You _were_ told that you didn’t have to, you know, _befriend_ him, weren’t you?” she interjected. “You’re just supposed to make sure he’s not hiding a second Elder Wand in the back of his closet—or, or, somehow plotting to overthrow the Ministry again. You’re supposed to be taking him to muggle shops so he can learn to count in pounds instead of galleons. Teaching him how to use a vacuum cleaner. That sort of thing. You don’t have to—you don’t have to _go on a minibreak to Ramsgate_ with him.”

“I know that I don’t _have_ to,” I sneered. “But I _want_ to. Why is it so difficult for you to believe that I would rather spend time with him than your family?”

Her expression turned sad. “Oh, Hermione,” she murmured. “Surely you haven’t forgotten that they’re your family, too?”

 

( _She was rifling through her coat pockets, searching for her mittens, front door wide open behind her._

_"What was the point of it all, then? Last year? What you went through? What he **watched** you go through?”_

_I did not respond._

_She left._ )

 

Ramsgate was postcard-pretty, even in the middle of winter. The water in the harbor was an angry grey, sloshing against the sailboats lined up along the dock with every whisper of the wind; the cottage was situated on the top of a hill overlooking the town, only accessible by an ancient cobblestone road that reminded me rather poignantly of the Hogwarts courtyard.

“Quaint, isn’t it?” he asked, dropping our bags and collapsing onto a large, brown leather sofa in the center of the room.

I hummed, looking around. "Very,” I agreed, wandering towards the short hallway that connected the main living space to the back of the house. There were two doors on either side with a floor-length, burgundy-curtained latticed window at the end. The left door led to a bathroom.

“Granger!” he called out. “What did you want to do for dinner? That inn we passed is supposed to have a decent wine list, but it looks like the booking agent stocked the pantry with—”

“Draco,” I interrupted slowly. “Where are the other bedrooms?”

There was a long pause. “What?”

I stood in the doorway of the one and only bedroom, my gaze trained on the tasteful, sky blue duvet blanketing the king-sized bed. “There is one bedroom,” I answered, my tone disbelieving. “One bedroom, Malfoy, and _one bloody bed_.”

A loud crash sounded from the kitchen.

 

( _Later, he would admit that the booking agent had referred to me as his girlfriend more than once._

_She had made assumptions about our sleeping arrangements._

_He had not corrected her._ )

 

Christmas Day dawned brightly, beautifully—or, it would have, if I hadn’t woken up to a pale, pointed elbow jammed directly into the soft part of my abdomen.

“Malfoy!” I screeched, rolling over. “That _hurt_. God, why can’t you just stick to your own bloody side?”

He mumbled something unintelligible into his pillow. “You’re right, Hermione,” I went on sarcastically, lowering my voice. “I’m being a terrible friend and flatmate and should vacate the _extra-large_ premises of the _king-sized_ bed at your earliest convenience. Which would be _now_.”

He groaned. “Fuck _off_ , Granger, it’s barely even light out.”

I poked him in the back of the head. “You _elbowed me in the spleen_.”

“So?” he yawned.

I narrowed my eyes. “Fine,” I huffed, sitting up. “I’ll just go to the couch, like one of us _should have done last night_ , and you can flail about all you wa—”

He wrapped a lean, well-muscled arm around my waist and yanked me back down, curling his body around mine. “Are you bleeding internally, Granger?” he murmured into my neck. His breath was hot. “Do you require immediate medical attention?”

I squirmed. He held on tighter. “Of—of course not,” I stammered.

I felt him smile, his lips curving upwards against my skin. “Then shut up, stop being such a swot, and go back to sleep,” he demanded, burying his nose in my hair, inhaling deeply.

 

( _His hand felt large, long-fingered and implacable, as it rested across my stomach._

_His thumb rubbed a comforting, rhythmic circle in the hollow adjacent to my pelvic bone._

_We woke up two hours later, positions unchanged._

_When I looked over my shoulder, his eyes were dark, pupils blown._

_"Don’t,” he said hoarsely._

_I forgot how to breathe—_

_And my lungs screamed and screamed and screamed._ )

 

We spent Christmas in front of the enormous stone fireplace, bundled up in thick wool sweaters and the duvet we’d stolen from the bedroom. I made eggnog on the stove, dumping half a bottle of brandy in at the very end—it was my mother’s recipe, and I didn’t dwell on the pang of longing that reverberated through my chest when the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg and vanilla permeated the tiny cottage kitchen.

“This is delicious, Granger, but I’m not convinced that it’s going to get me drunk,” he drawled, picking up the remote for the television and muting the film we’d been watching— _Miracle on 34 th Street._

“You drink like a fish,” I said. “Nothing short of a barrel of whisky is going to get you drunk.”

He pouted indignantly. “Oi!” he objected. “I resent the implication that my behavior is even _marginally_ uncouth. I’ll have you know that Zabini could have single-handedly put the Hog’s Head out of business without even getting sick. When we were _fourth-years._ ”

I choked on a mouthful of eggnog. “So is that what you all did in Slytherin?”

He shot me a sly grin. “Well, we played games, too,” he replied, tapping his fingers against my ankle. “After all, alcohol is the greatest of all social lubricants. Surely you’ve realized by now.”

I bit back a smile. “We drank quite a lot of butterbeer in Gryffindor,” I informed him primly. “And the only game _I_ ever played was chess.”

He chuckled. “What, you lot were so boring you never had even a single game of—oh, I don’t know—truth or dare? Never have I ever?”

“Oh,” I said, feigning disappointment. “So Slytherin was _actually_ just like a preteen girls’ slumber party? Why didn’t you say so earlier? I’ve definitely been to one of those.”

 He barked out a laugh. “Yeah,” he confirmed with a leer, “so have I.”

 

( _We were lying in bed together later that night, faces and mouths only a few inches apart, when he reached forward, swept his fingertips down my cheek, cupped my jaw, and asked—_

_"You Obliviated them, didn’t you? Your parents?”_

_I nodded, caught his wrist._ _“I couldn’t fix it,” I confessed. “I couldn’t fix them.”_ )

 

We were back in London for New Year’s Eve. He had made dinner reservations at a Michelin-starred French restaurant in Mayfair, insisting that it would be sacrilege to not end the year with one of their Gruyere soufflés—I disagreed, but put on the tiny, long-sleeved black dress he’d bought for me, forgoing tights as I slid into a pair of hideously expensive, outrageously high-heeled nude pumps.

 

( _“Are you wearing—Christ, is that **lipstick** , Granger?”_

 _I blushed. "_ _Seemed appropriate,” I said, fidgeting nervously._

 _His expression flickered._ _"You look—” he started to say._

_“Is it not alright?” I asked. “Should I wipe it off?”_

_He blinked._ _"No,” he said gruffly. “No, you look—perfect. You’re perfect. Let’s go, yeah?”_ )

 

The restaurant was busy when we arrived; the hostess led us to the bar, apologizing profusely, and Draco ordered us drinks while we settled in to wait.

 

( _“The bartender’s staring at you,” he remarked, knocking back his second shot of vodka._

 _Confused, I furrowed my brow._ _“What? Who?”_

 _He chewed on a piece of ice and jerked his chin up._ _"Behind you,” he bit out. “The bartender. You know, the bloke who’s **tending bar**.”_

_I glanced over my shoulder._

_He was young, handsome—he had shaggy brown hair and a dopey sort of smile, a square chin and a broad chest that tapered down to narrow hips._

_I was not interested._

_“Get me another drink, Draco?” I asked sweetly. “I’m all out.”_

_He relaxed his posture._ )

 

The chef had prepared nine courses. We started with baked goat cheese canapés, tangy, tart, and creamy, and the sound I made as I took my first bite should have embarrassed me— _would have_ embarrassed me, if he hadn’t coughed and taken a gulp of chilled white wine, a dull pink flush darkening the bottom of his neck.

“Pheasant chowder’s up next, I think,” he managed to grunt.

 

( _I was drunk by the time they cleared the fish._

_"I’ve been wondering—since practically the day you moved in, God—but what the fuck happened with you and Weasley? Weren’t you all set to…” he trailed off, making an obscene hand gesture._

_"Oh, we never got that far,” I answered vaguely. “There were other knickers he was much more interested in getting into.”_

_He slouched forward._ _“Know what you say to a bloke who pulls that particular brand of bullshit, Granger?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper._

 _I sputtered. "_ _No, what?”_

 _He put his elbows on the table and smirked. "_ _You tell him that it’s unfortunate, then, that you aren’t wearing any.”_

 _I knocked my flute of champagne right into the mint sorbet._ )

 

The duck confit melted in my mouth, smooth and buttery and rich—I chewed delicately, savoring the flavor, and closed my eyes when I noticed the way he was watching me.

Like he was a predator.

Like I was his prey.

Like he _wanted_.

 

( _He dragged the tines of his fork through the small pool of apricot vinaigrette at the bottom of his salad bowl._

_“The werewolf told me you were coming,” he admitted. “To live with me, I mean. He thought—” He stopped, laughed humorlessly, and continued. “—he thought that **after everything I’d been through** I deserved to know who had volunteered to bloody babysit me for five months.”_

_I took a tasteless bite of arugula._ _“He told you that I’d volunteered?”_

 _He swirled his vodka tonic, watched the lime wedge on the edge of the glass teeter ominously._ _“Yeah,” he said. “He did.”_ )

 

Our second entrée was quail cassoulet—hearty, gamey, filling—and was served with a rose red wine that left a sickly sweet film along the front of my teeth.

“I never thought you’d be this much fun, you know,” he commented, stretching his legs out underneath the table. “Back when we were in school.”

“I probably _wasn’t_ very much fun when we were in school,” I told him, starting when I felt his foot collide with my ankle.

His gaze was all sharp, searing heat as he appraised me. “Yeah,” he said drily. “Neither was I. Nineteen year-old virgin, remember?”

My lips parted—

 

( _It was half past eleven when he pushed the cheese plate away and rolled up his left shirt sleeve._

 _"It took six hours to stick,” he said blearily, grey eyes glittering in the purposefully dim candlelight. “They said—my father said—it was because I didn’t want it badly enough.”_ )

 

He grabbed my hand and laced our fingers together as our waiter cleared away the peaches, pistachios, and strawberries.

My heart lurched.

I fancied he could feel the surge of blood and fear and lust and oxygen in the spider web of capillaries strung underneath the thin skin of my palm.

 

( _“I don’t want to leave,” I said softly. “I don’t want to have to go back.”_

 _He listened, impassively, as the rest of the restaurant started the countdown to midnight._ )

 

The back of the taxi was grimy, the faux-leather seats sticky, the air saturated with the scent of off-brand cologne.

“Twenty quid extra if you don’t look in the rearview mirror,” he told the driver, shoving a bundle of notes through the plastic partition.

He kissed me.

And he tasted like coffee.

He tasted like coffee and redemption and something else, something better, but my brain had flat-lined, disconnected, and there was _nothing_ after that, nothing but his tongue around mine—rough, wet, surprisingly strong—and his fingers brushing against the lace of my knickers—a feather-light caress that felt too intimate, too soon, too much.

“Please, Granger, tell me to stop, tell me to stop and I will, just—”

 

( _I did not tell him to stop._

_Not when the front door slammed shut._

_Not when he had me backed up against the wall of his bedroom._

_Not when he yanked my dress over my head, leaving me naked, mostly, in the silvery-bright patch of moonlight streaming in through his window._

_“Leave the heels on,” he said. “Please.”_

_His voice cracked._ )

 

There was an unexpected mix of pleasure and pain as he pushed inside of me.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” he panted. “You feel—”

I bit down on the muscle in his shoulder. “Yeah,” I said breathlessly. “I know.”

 

( _When I finally came, it felt as if I had been flayed open, spine exposed, a cachet of fireworks set off in half-second increments along my vertebrae as he murmured my name so reverently I could not help but think that there must be some magic to it, to me, to him._ )

 

On January first, he told me that he was leaving for Paris the following afternoon.

“I promised my mother,” he said.

I felt sick, suddenly.

 

( _“Why do you like Christmas so much?” I asked him once, exasperated._

 _He frowned as he contemplated the sprig of mistletoe he was holding. "_ _My mother loves it,” he replied, distracted. “She always decorated the manor.”_

_“Not to sound terribly insensitive, Malfoy, but your mother isn’t here.”_

_He pursed his lips._ _“No, she isn’t.”_

_Silence reigned for several minutes before he spoke again._

_“She lied to the Dark Lord for me, Granger.”_ )

 

“Are you coming back?” I asked dumbly.

His face was blank. “Probably not, no.”

 

( _He lied._

_Of course he lied._ )

 

* * *

 


	3. sweet

* * *

 

_January – July, 1999_

 

I got my life together after he was gone.

It wasn’t, I frequently told myself, as if I didn’t have it together _before_ —I had just been a little bit broken, slightly rough around the edges and burdened with a random series of microscopic cracks that didn’t really _go_ anywhere or lead to anything or provide any sort of structural integrity. But I hadn’t been in pieces. I had still, despite all of the evidence that might have indicated otherwise, been _whole_.

 

( _“You should have waited for me,” I said in the middle of February._

 _Ron had the decency to look ashamed._ )

 

Before he’d left, Draco had paid out the lease on the flat through the rest of the year.

I still moved out on the first of March.

“Isn’t it a little morbid?” Harry asked dubiously, rifling through an empty drawer in my parents’ old kitchen. “Coming to live here?”

I clenched my jaw. “It’s _comforting_ ,” I said. “It’s—I need to learn how to miss them.”

 

( _I received a postcard from Sicily._

 **_Zabini can still drink me under the table_ ** _, he wrote, letters sloped and uneven. And then, underneath, almost an afterthought, **I miss you so fucking much.**_

_I held the flimsy cardstock over an open flame on the stove._

_Seconds passed, but—_ )

 

I spent St. Patrick’s Day in a poorly lit pub on the outskirts of Diagon Alley, watching with thinly veiled amusement as Harry tried to shout out an order for another round of firewhiskey over the deafening din of the crowd. He wasn’t successful.

“So,” Ginny said, running a hand through the tangled ends of her hair. “Remember that time you spent half a year shagging Draco Malfoy?”

I spit out my drink.

She raised an eyebrow.

I deflated.

“It wasn’t half a year,” I argued weakly.

 

( _Athens was next._

_**There is an abundance of exceptionally old statuary in Greece** , he wrote. **Also: sunburn. I’d compare myself to a lobster, but the locals are rather fond of their seafood. Probably shouldn’t risk it.**_

_I traced my fingertips over the brittle, long-dry stains of ink._

_Again,_

_and again,_

_and **again**._ )

 

April passed without incident.

“Heard you turned down another job at the Ministry,” Harry remarked one day at lunch, taking a large bite of his sandwich.

“It was in the Department of Mysteries,” I replied, arranging my leftover French fries into a perfectly straight line. “I’d sooner try to resurrect Bellatrix Lestrange then go back there, thanks ever so.”

He snorted, but cast a worried glance at my forearm all the same. “What are you going to do, then? You finished up with Malfoy back in January,” he reminded me.

I did not cringe. “I’m writing a novel,” I answered honestly.

He looked at me in surprise. “About what?”

I took a thoughtful sip of ginger-strawberry lemonade. “Mistakes,” I finally answered. I wrinkled my nose before continuing, “And Voldemort, too, I suppose.”

 

( _A small parcel came the second week of May._

 **_Barcelona is full of Americans_ ** _, he scribbled on the back of a restaurant napkin. **Someone really should have told me.**_

_The napkin was wrapped around an oval-shaped amber pendant with a silver chain looped through the top._

_A second piece of cardstock fell to the floor when I upended the envelope._

_**Your eyes** , it said._)

 

Ten days later I was at Sunday brunch with the Weasleys, standing in the backyard with Ron and George as Molly finished preparing pancakes.

“Lucius Malfoy is getting out of Azkaban next month,” Ron said, clutching his butterbeer in a white-knuckled fist. “Can you bloody believe it? Only got a year.”

George squinted up at the sun. “Well—his wife _did_ turn traitor to You-Know-Who at the very last minute,” he pointed out. “And a very _important_ last minute it was, little brother.”

Ron swatted at a swarm of mosquitos that were hovering around us, disrupting a nearby daffodil bush. There was an explosion of pollen. “Only to save precious little _Draco_ , though,” he snarled. “Useless twat. What’s he even doing now? Traipsing about the continent, pretending to be a muggle?”

I sneezed. “Allergies,” I supplied with a grimace.

 

( ** _My mother prefers the same champagne you do,_** _he wrote from Prague on June 17th._

_The words after that were lighter in color and hastily scrawled, as if he’d added them using a different pen in the middle of the post office._

_**Muggles think my Mark is nothing more than a poorly thought-out, particularly regrettable tattoo. The irony is almost too much to bear.** _

_I laughed helplessly—_

_And then I cried.)_

 

He was a sweaty, disheveled mess when he showed up on my doorstep at the end of July.

“Did the—did the post already come?” he heaved, bending over to clutch at his side.

I stared at him incredulously. “ _Malfoy_?” I bleated.

His cheeks were dark red as he watched at me intently. “The post,” he repeated, breathing hard. “Did it come?”

I thought about what I’d received from him, just that morning. “You came all the way back to England to steal my mail, didn’t you?”

He winced. “Not _all_ your mail,” he said quickly. “Just…”

I swallowed and reached into the pocket of my sweatshirt. “Just this?” I asked, holding up the postcard.

His eyes snapped down.

 

( _“Wish you were still living in our flat,” he said, collapsing onto my parents’ couch. “Bit of a nightmare getting to the suburbs.”_

_I didn’t sit down._ _“It was yours,” I corrected him. “The flat. It was yours, not ours.”_

_He shook his head. "_ _Don’t be dense, Granger.”_ )

 

He _felt_ just as I remembered.

But he tasted like cheap spearmint gum and stale cola and his chin was scratchy with day-old stubble and he was _different_ , too, in the way that he reeked of sweat and curry and the unfamiliar plasticized leather of a train seat. His shoulders were wider, more muscular, and his fingernails were trimmed unevenly, cuticles lined with dirt, and weirdly, awkwardly sharp as they dug into my hips.

 

( _“You said you weren’t coming back,” I blurted out. “When you left.”_

 _He gulped down his bottled water. "_ _I don’t even think **I** believed that,” he responded with a wry twist of his lips._)

 

He gripped the backs of my thighs, silently urging me to wrap my legs around his waist, as he stumbled up the narrow staircase.

“Never thought it’d be you,” he mumbled, sucking bruises into the space between my collarbones. “Never thought I’d be _lucky enough_ for it to be you.”

 

( _I rolled my hips, felt how hard he was through his corduroy trousers, and abruptly, desperately, I fucking **ached**._ )

 

“I shouldn’t forgive you,” I gasped, arching into his hands as he kneaded my breasts. “You—you just—”

“I know,” he said plaintively before thrusting into me. “I _know_ , Granger.”

 

( _The mattress creaked and the bed springs moaned and the noise was like the soundtrack to falling apart;_

 _To being put back together._ )

 

“I wanted the first time you heard it from me to be in person,” he said later, picking an olive off of his pizza slice and examining it suspiciously.

I tore a paper napkin into thirds and fourths and fifths. “Why?” I asked.

He flicked the olive onto my plate. “I wanted you to see my face,” he answered, hiccupping. “I wanted you to know that I meant it.”

I offered him a smile, soft and private. “I knew that anyway, though.”

 

( _The postcard came from Calais._

_**Granger** had been written and crossed out and replaced with **Hermione**._

_And then, below that, script slanted, smudged, hurried, perfect—_

_**I love you.** _

**_I love you._ **

**_I love you._** )

 

* * *

 


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